By Jess Westendorf
The Iowa men’s golf team will compete in the Paintbrush Intercollegiate tournament today and Tuesday in Parker, Colorado.
Today will consist of 36 holes with tee times starting at 9:30 a.m. The final round will take place Tuesday, with tee times to be determined. The Hawkeye lineup consists of senior Raymond Knoll in the No. 1 spot followed by sophomore Matthew Walker, senior Carson Schaake, freshman Alex Schaake, and junior Sam Meuret.
The Paintbrush Intercollegiate is hosted by the University of Denver and will be played at the Colorado Golf Club. The club is considered one of the best courses in Colorado, and it has been host to many premier events, such as the 2010 Senior PGA Championship and the 2013 Solheim Cup.
The course stretches 7,604 yards and will be played as a par 72. It’s average elevation exceeds 6,100 feet above sea level. Iowa will be one of 15 teams competing in the tournament, including Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.
The Hawkeyes are coming off of a seventh-place finish at the Golfweek Conference Challenge in Burlington at the Spirit Hollow Golf Course. The first and second round resulted in high scores for the Hawkeyes, who struggled with their short game.
“We made all the same mistakes we made yesterday,” head coach Tyler Stith said in a release on Oct. 1. “We made some double bogeys, didn’t really give ourselves a chance to post any good scores. We had too many big numbers.”
After the tournament last weekend, Stith and his team wanted to focus more on their short game and improving its putting.
“We are a little more short-game-oriented right now, we’ve been doing a lot of putting and chipping games,” Walker said. “So I’d say more short game than we have been doing, but I think it will pay off in the long run.”
Walker was one of two Hawkeyes to come back in the third round and post a top-10 finish last weekend. In fact, he jumped an impressive 22 spots on the leaderboard to tie for eighth overall. He carded his career-best 18-hole score in the final round shooting a 66 (6-under).
“The first two rounds were a bit of a struggle on the greens, but the last round I got some putts to drop and I shot better in the third round,” he said. “I feel like I have some positive momentum going into Denver.”
Knoll also had a top-10 finish last weekend, scoring a 54-hole total of 209 (7-under) to give him third place overall. During the third round, he sunk five birdies to help give him a round score of 69.
The lineup will be the same for the Hawkeyes going into the Paintbrush Intercollegiate as it was for the Golfweek Challenge. Three of the five who qualified to make the lineup have started every tournament this fall — Knoll, Carson Schaake, and Walker.
“We’ve had a good week of practice, and qualifying was very competitive,” Stith said. “The guys traveling are playing the best right now, and they’ve earned their spot. I have confidence in all five of them.”
